The rougher and readier cousin of Marketing magazine. You'll find ideas, gossip, commentary and a touch of cynicism as we flex our journalistic muscles beyond the constraints of our monthly mag.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Citizen blog

We’re blogging about blogs again – and why not? It seems 46% of the online population in Singapore have created blogs of their own, according to the latest MindShare research.

So if nearly half the online population of Singapore are creating blogs then that must make us a pretty up-to-date and savvy bunch? Guess again – compared with China’s figures which show a staggering 77% of its online population creating blogs, are actually a nation full of early adopters and hi-tech embracing citizens?

So what is it about blogs which has China embracing it tirelessly? The study conducted research on participants aged 15 to 35 across Singapore, China, India, Taiwan, Malaysia and Australia, and suggested that China’s youth were more eager to express themselves freely in blogs than Singaporeans’ were. Perhaps they see the positives more than we do?

Forget about the recent negative press blogs have been receiving – just know that blogs are great tool to get peer to peer communications going. We do it all the time here on The Pitch and so without sounding cliché, we do value your feedback. Genuine blogs always have the potential for the consumer or user to engage in a fantastic arena in which they can get educated, entertained and….etc.

If I am not mistaken (as I am doing this from memory) Richard Edelman when he came down in late ’06 argued that nowadays people tended to trust peer to peer communications more than communications from official brand spokespersons. Not surprising then to hear about the growing number of flogs around talking about PSPs and other what have you nots.

I am no blog expert, I don’t pretend to be -- what I want is to hear what my peers have to say. What is the word on blogging in Singapore? Has its time already come and gone? Marketers lend me your ears – is the market in Singapore really not ready for hi-tech campaigns?

5 comments:

The efficacy of blogging as a marketing tool is yet to be proven. Yes it generates alot of hype and its value raised due to the fact that most of the time, it's consumer driven.

But pages and pages of enthusiastic posts and commentors are something to marvel at, alot of marketers forget 2 prime ingredients when they try their hand at blog marketing, namely that the very nature of blogging resists any form of management by an interested party and it only attracts those already who are interested in the subject matter itself.

An excellent example was the Snakes on a Plane movie blog hype. Despite the massive online hype generated SIX months prior to its release, ticket sales didn't even come close to being tops for such a widely touted blockbuster.

There's also the new 'trend' of blogging for $$, see http://staff.science.nus.edu.sg/~sivasothi/blog/index.php?entry=/mac%20and%20the%20internet/20070310-blogging_for_dollars.txt , which some Singapore bloggers are doing.

Nokia also tried this channel for its N73, handing free phones to notable notable bloggers: see http://popagandhi.com/380/nokia-n73-a-review/and http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2006/08/using_the_nokia.html and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4YYGrJhis